Replica

Issue 14 | Summer 2025 | Damilola Oyedeji

 

In the classroom, we chanted native songs from
dirty wooden benches and watched time

crawl away from us. I sat amidst them with
eyes peeled. Watched a boy sing to the wind about death

and other voices rumbled beneath his
while my lips cleaved to themselves. 

Here, such eulogy invokes death, like whistling at
night conjures spirits whose legs levitate 

above the ground. My heart tightened,
as if my ancestors, in the darkness they reside,

hummed. I embraced the vibrations 
of their dreaded melodies, and my eyes 

drowned with fearful tears. 
Death is the scent of this place.

Later in my home,
I heard my mother scream,

saw her hands clasp 
her head, then plop 

beside her, shoulders surrendering to defeat. 
Mother is gold, but my mother’s gold has dissolved into dust.

It’s eleven years now, in mid-west America,
I dream of mother’s gold replica

transforming into a plump woman with bronze skin,
and eight tribal marks angled on her face; three clean

vertical lines standing on five horizontal ones,
reminding me of sailing ships.

She’s sitting, smiling,
looking at me, waving.

I see bronze hands
pull her into humming waters 

till all that is left of her is the Ànkárá fabric
that strapped us to our mothers’ backs.